“Do you mean the real you has never died? Because I saw your body lying in the dirt, bleeding out after the demon killed you.”
“The me talking to you has never died.
“A part of me was within Loer’allon and the other Angel Swords even then and another part of me was drawn into you when my body died.
“I have not died, so I cannot answer your question.
“The part of me that was in you is gone.
“Perhaps you should ask him.”
I pouted. “But you’re all I have!”
“And you have all the answer I can give.”
When I did not reply for some time, obviously still pouting, he added, “Look around you, Saedeus. You live in a world of magic made real, of angels and demons. Hell is beating at out doorstep, charging in through the Chaos Gate, and the armies of Heaven have fallen.
“There is an afterlife. Heaven exists.
“I am just not a part of it, at least not completely, so I cannot answer your questions directly.
“You interact with the divine daily. It is all around you, from your heavenly sword to the radiant Light that suffuses Creation making magic possible.
“What more do you want?
“Help rid the world of its ills that Paradise can be more clearly seen and felt on Uërth.
“If you truly wish to experience Heaven, that is your task. Realize the divine in your heart and bring that realization to life in the world around you.
“Help it grow.
“Foster its development.
“Bring forth the Light that others may shine.”
Score one for the disembodied ghost.
I would keep my questions to myself.
At least for the next few minutes.
A Change of Scenery
Although Alric indicated that there were outposts of civilization within the region sheltered by the fallen Angel Swords’ magic, ones I would be wise to visit, I carefully steered clear of any signs of humanity.
After my experience in Tueran, I was in no hurry to interact with my fellow men.
Besides, Lucius was great company.
I could barely get a word in edgewise with all his chatter.
What more did I need?
More importantly, being by myself in safe lands also allowed me to experiment freely with the Sigil Shield.
While Alric’s teaching at night continued with a particular focus on the armor and its usage, direct experience of the Aegis’s capabilities was preferable in my mind.
The world was brighter, sharper, and capacious with the armor on. I could feel my environs with a clarity that I had not anticipated. My world, my sense of self, expanded outward and, with this extension, my sense of what was intrinsically possible grew as well.
Just moving was different.
I floated across the landscape, indefatigable.
I didn’t feel like I was walking on clouds. I felt like I was a cloud—light, free, and unhindered.
Strangely, I simultaneously felt charged with energy, power, and strength, able to do anything with ease and minimal effort.
And it was true.
I bounded across the landscape, leaping over trees effortlessly, tossing boulders high into the air—much to Lucius’s disapproval—and wielding Loer’allon with a skill and confidence of one born to the blade, as if she were an extension of myself.
And she was.
My connection with Loer’allon deepened, the Sigil Shield heightening our connection, bringing us closer, attuning us to one another, and amplifying our abilities. I could sense the other Angel Swords through Loer’allon and the apparitions of their masters, present and past, just as I knew they now sensed me.
Though I did not communicate or share knowledge through the blade, I now understood this, too, was possible. I wondered if I would be able to take that ability further and internalize knowledge directly as I did when taking in the soul of another.
Through Loer’allon I was provided a window into a much wider world.
One where foolhardy young men inexperienced with true freedom whooped and hollered, bounding across the countryside with the eager abandon of a child lost to the thrill of the moment, the rush of new and exciting feelings, and the excitement of imagined vistas made real in a mind’s eye not yet enclosed by thoughts of limitation or loss.
I suppose that was another reason I avoided others of my kind in the zone of safety.
No one needed to see me so giddily happy.
Or being odder than I normally was.
I did not want to lose that feeling while I had it.
I was just glad to experience such reckless joy.
I knew the feelings would be short-lived.
I was walking on an island, an iceberg floating in a warming sea of hostility. All around this refuge, demons held sway over the land, a vile plague of life-devouring iniquity. As in so many other places across Uërth, the bounds of human activity, the realm of human influence, were shrinking, falling back to regions of safety—ice melting before the demonic heat of summer.
Within just a few too-short days, the lush, unsullied landscape began to change, slowly losing its luster and verdancy.
With each reluctant step forward, I entered more and more fully into demon territory once more.
Something New
While I was bounding from side to side along the walls of a deep canyon heading generally southward, flying over large, tumbled rocks and leaping to and from cliff faces as I tested myself within the arcane armor, Alric surprised me with a question.
He had been silent the whole day.
“Did you notice what you did to bring Loer’allon and Lucius back?”
I dropped to the canyon bottom to give his question my full attention. “What do you mean? The angels brought Loer’allon and Lucius back.”
“No, Saedeus.
“You did.”
The return of my friends was such a blur…I had just garnered some semblance of clarity in my mind after the demonic possession and subsequent cleansing by the angelic Light that I could not recall the details clearly.
I could barely remember what had happened, much less how it had happened.
“I did what?
“The angels, the Angel Swords, brought Lucius and Loer’allon back to Uërth.”
“No. You took the power around you, manifested by the Angel Swords, molded it to your vision, expressed your need, and brought your friends back.
“You did not take the power from someone dying.
“You did not take the power from within yourself.
“You took the power to express your need from divine beings.
“If you can draw energy like that to fulfill your need from beings birthed to power, entities whose limits are beyond mortal ken, who are power incarnate, I do not know what you cannot do, Saedeus.
He paused significantly before adding, “I believe in you.”
I started to speak and thought better of it because I truly did not know what to say.
Had I done that?
Could I do that?
Would I be able to take and harness a demon’s power and make it my own without killing it?
I would have to find out.
A Man and His Blade
“How do most Empyrean Knights get their swords, Alric?
“Do they visit a battlefield like the one we were just in and hope they are selected by a holy sword?
“Do they quest for the right blade?
“Do visions guide them toward their destiny?
“Are keeps set up near heavenly battlegrounds, allowing new recruits to go out and have their worth judged by the fallen Angel Swords?”
Alric’s reply was quick. “Yes.”
I guess that answered that.
So much for a conversation.
To be fair to Alric, through the lore he had shared I knew the answer. I was just trying to pass the time in conversation while loping over the scrub-laden hills that approached the dis
tant peaks of the vertiginous Doeren Muer on the horizon.
Alric’s reassuring words from the day before echoed warningly through my mind as I looked forward.
“The mountains ahead are home to the fey. Crossing through them will save us much time…if they let us pass.”
“Fornost lies within Doeren Muer.”
The words came from my mind unbidden, not so much a question, merely a thought. “Aye. Far from where we will cross.”
Images of Alric’s home sprang to mind—the high, defiant peaks, the verdant, wooded mountainsides, the rocky outcroppings projecting above even the highest trees, the depthless blue skies reflected in untroubled glacial lakes, the mysteries of the sidhe and dryads whose miraculous works could sometimes be glimpsed when looking askance at the hills but never directly, the simple carved stone dwellings of his people interspersed along the hills, waterways, and lakes of the numerous sheltered valleys—so much in so little.
Unlike the sere, drained Infernal Plains at their feet, the sides of these unbowed mountains were covered in variegated profusion, a strict line of demarcation marking the boundary of corruption in the foothills at their roots. Plumes of clouds shrouding the mountainsides resembled pillars of smoke rising from the banks of fog cloaking the dense forests.
This moisture appeared to leave the plains below untouched, or, perhaps like the demonic forces haunting their reaches, the plain’s thirst could never be satisfied.
If, as Alric said, crossing the mountains would be much faster and safer than trying to skirt their boundary, I would have to be prepared to get wet…and muddy.
Thankfully, I now had my Sigil Shield, which made such concerns moot.
Or so I hoped.
Of course, Alric had also said we would have to be granted permission to cross the mountains by the Doeren Muer’s denizens—the sidhe, the dryads, the dragons, and any other race that decided to bar our way through their realms.
Having an Angel Sword would help earn our passage, but even it was no guarantee.
My earlier questions really had ulterior motives other than being a means to pass the time.
While Alric accepted my silence with his own, I renewed my query. “Would you tell me how you first came to bear Loer’allon as your own?”
“The remembrance should still be within your mind, Saedeus.”
“I just wanted to hear the tale in your words, Alric.”
“Some things are earned. Others are given. Some are both.”
Oh, well.
So much for a story.
I snorted.
I bet none of his fellow Empyrean Knights had urged Alric to recount the tales of his triumphs at the tavern while sharing a frothy mug of spirits and a good time. Neither would his companions have asked him to regale envoys with stories of his exploits during formal visits of state.
No, old Alric would have been too busy caving in demonic heads to waste his breath on matters as insignificant as establishing interpersonal relationships, improving communication, or building camaraderie. His tale was told in blood and a trail of enemies that never ran dry.
Then the visions came and I was shown the error of my ways.
A Gift Regiven
I relived Alric’s life.
Or much of it, at least.
I had not wanted to re-experience a summation of his existence—Alric’s life seen in flashes faster than the blinks of an eye—as I had when I had first inadvertently taken his soul upon myself, but that was how Alric wanted me to see and feel his story.
I would not interfere.
This time, however, I relived the streaming images and sensations of Alric’s life with a much deeper understanding, compassion, and appreciation.
No longer so sheltered, my view broadened, although it still might be considered restricted by most, I felt his experiences, his challenges and realizations, resonate deeply with my own.
I was a different person.
Had so little time truly passed?
Alric might be brighter, more capable, and poised than I would honestly or even foolhardily claim, but we still lived in a similar place, one with relentless forces beyond our control shaping and guiding us while we struggled to find both our place and the opportunity to shape our world and our lives within it.
As I watched Alric’s father, Laric, pass his refulgent sword on to his son, Alric’s words filled my mind. “Most Empyrean Knights come by their blades through combat, through feat of arms, the bestowal a final accomplishment earned after many arduous trials, the end result of a long quest after a lifetime spent upholding the highest ideals of self-cultivation, personal refinement, sacrifice, and selfless effort.
“I did not.
“I am something of a rarity.
“I come from a long line of Empyrean Knights, a chain of dedication tried but never broken.
“I grew up with Loer’allon.
“Loer’allon has chosen someone in my family to be her wielder for ages. She has been in my clan since the first Angel Swords fell from the skies so many centuries ago; when men once again took up the mantles of angels and began fighting off the demonic incursion as we had in days so long ago that the memories were lost to us before angelic intervention.
“With her blessing, my father handed Loer’allon to me directly.
“And now I have passed Loer’allon to you.”
The full import of Alric’s words hit me.
Loer’allon would pass out of Alric’s clan if I did not pass her on, if she did not choose someone else from his family.
I represented the end of an unbroken lineage over a thousand years old.
I was, to put it mildly, something of a buzzkill.
But that was nothing new.
At least for me.
Then, as I was learning to see, largely thanks to Alric’s unwavering tutelage and his stubborn refusal to let me succumb to my base nature, there was also the positive, the truth Alric would not say directly but would only imply.
I was, sadly and probably disappointingly for him and the Knights at large, his spiritual successor…
His son in arms.
Alric had probably once envisioned passing Loer’allon on to his own child, or perchance a close relative he had groomed to take the mantle of Knighthood and honor Loer’allon and all she stood for by accepting her hilt.
With his untimely death that dream had shattered, never to be rebuilt or recovered.
Instead, he ended up with me—an awkward, rude, ill-kempt vagrant.
I could also include ignorant, short-sighted, presumptuous, overblown, and egotistical, among too many other far too accurate descriptors.
I felt sorry for Alric.
But I also felt a fierce pride.
I was glad that he believed in me, that, no matter how lowly I was, he felt that I could grow into someone worthy to take his place.
I might be Alric’s pale shadow, but he believed enough in me to push me forward into the light of day that I might cast my own, one that he fostered so that it could endeavor to be as impactful as his.
As unfortunate as Alric’s demise was, his death was my rebirth.
I was hardly worthy of the sacrifice.
But I would wield his sword as best I could.
I no longer had plans to go south to pass Loer’allon off to the Empyrean Knights.
I planned to go south to meet the spawning torrent of the Chaos Gate itself, to scream my defiance into its maw, and show the demons within and those spewing forth in their tumultuous multitudes what happens when a good man is cut down before his time.
I would be the realization of Alric’s dreams.
As warped and twisted as I might make them become.
A Chance Encounter
“Relax, Saedeus.
“Breathe.
“Let your breath become you.
“Allow your awareness to flow outward.
“Do not hold any one thing within your mind...
“No conception.
> “No thought.
“No reflection.”
A pause. “What do you feel?”
I certainly did not feel tired.
The Empyrean Aegis saw to that.
My strides ate the distance faster than any horse. Ahead, the peaks of Doeren Muer, sometimes called Heaven’s Edge for both the range’s beauty and apparent nearness to the firmament given the vertiginous heights of its lofty peaks, already loomed much larger than the day before.
I could pick out numerous details of her flanks, from massive, vegetation-crusted outcroppings to sparkling waterfalls, as I loped toward an unspoiled Eden emerging from the dust and decay of the desecrated plains.
Losing itself in Alric’s words, my mind calmed and widened, a mantle encompassing the space around me, my body but one facet of the entirety touched by my awareness.
“Openness.
“Clarity.
“Depth.
“Ease.
“Stillness.”
Each word was a statement, a conversation, unto itself.
“What does that openness touch?
“What does that clarity reveal?
“What fills that depth?
“How is that ease expressed?
“What arises from that stillness?”
Light.
The plains danced with the energies of creation, an etheric beauty as yet untrammeled by the demonic infestation.
The Sigil Shield let me see and feel this vibrancy, the very heartbeat of magic, with blinding intensity, with overwhelming proximity.
My eyes, once closed, were now open.
“Light,” I breathed.
“Let that Light become you.
“Breathe It in.
“Fill yourself with It.
“Let Its radiance overtake you.”
Letting go, dissolving completely into the effulgence that was the intrinsic beauty and reality of my world, Uërth’s true blessing, I became the Light.
The world shifted.
Or perhaps it stayed the same, becoming more fundamental, more alive, a place of limitless potential, a divine realm made real.
Legacy of the Blade: The Complete Trilogy Page 13